The 11 Least Free Presses In The World

A university student is taken away by plainclothes policemen after giving an interview about censorship to foreign media. AP The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right "to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

A weak bill on privately-owned broadcasts and electronic media was submitted to parliament but has been abandoned, meaning that U.S.-backed president Abd Rab Mansour Hadi has done nothing to help the press since taking office in February 2012.

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Sudan's military regime made it tough on journos for decades.

Protesters support Lubna Hussein (right), a Sudanese journalist and press officer for the UN who faced 40 lashes for wearing pants in public in Khartoum. AP Photo/Abd Raouf

Cuba even throws reporters for the official paper in jail.

A man reads the Communist Party newspaper Granma on October 16, 2012, which has a front page article on how Cubans no longer have to apply for an exit visa.AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa

Cuba ranks 171 out of 179 countries with a score of 71 out of 100.

Cuba recently allowed its citizens to leave the country without applying for exit visas, but the country is still known for incredibly restrictive press laws and persecution of journalists. Even reporters working for the Communist Party's official newspaper, Granma, have been charged with spying and thrown in jail, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Vietnam has begun jailing bloggers.

Vietnam, a single-party Communist state, has seen rapid economic growth in recent years but doesn't allow independent newspapers. Bloggers are a growing problem for the Communist Party, which threw 12 Internet journalists behind bars last year - second only to China in terms of how many bloggers have been imprisoned, RWB reported.

China is a superpower of press control.

China is well-known for their ability to manipulate the information in its country and shows no sign of letting up. Journalists and netizens are still routinely jailed while commercial news outlets and foreign media organizations are still censored regularly.

Censorship sparked protests in January when reporters at one of China's most respected and liberal papers accused the provincial propaganda chief of transforming a lengthy newspaper New Year editorial calling for political reform into a gushing homage to China's Communist Party.

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Iran controls everything that the media produce.

Reporters Without Borders activists, bound and made up as mock victims, protest against the imprisonment of Iranian journalists outside the Iran Air Office in Paris.AP Photo/Francois Mori

Iran ranks 174 out of 179 countries with a score of 73 out of 100.

The Islamic Republic is "one of the world's five biggest prisons for news and information providers," according tot he report.

The country's print and broadcast media and news websites are all controlled by the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards, and authorities have harassed and imprisoned of Iranian journalists who work for foreign news media or abroad.

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Somalia has become a deathtrap for reporters.

Mourners gather at the grave of Somali radio producer Abdihared Osman Aden, who was shot dead by two unknown gunmen earlier this month. He is the first journalist to be killed this year in Somalia, where 18 reporters were killed last year.
AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh

Somalia ranks 175 out of 179 countries with a score of 73 out of 100.

Somalia's experienced its deadliest year in history for the country's media in 2012 as 18 journalists were killed, caught up in bomb attacks or the direct targets of murder.

The Somali government says it plans to establish the legal framework for a free press and properly regulated telecommunications sector, but there continue to be situations such as the Somali journalist who has been imprisoned since January 10 for interviewing a woman who claimed she was raped by government soldiers.

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Syria's civil war is also an information war.

Demonstrators protest against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad as they hold pictures of two Turkish journalists who have gone missing in Syria in front of the Syrian consulate in Instanbul in March 2012.Flickr/FreedomHouse2

Syria ranks 176 out of 179 countries with a score of 78 out of 100.

Syria has seen the most attacks on freedom of information in the past year as journalists are targeted by both the regime and the opposition in an information war that parallels the country's 23-month civil war.

At least 98 professional or citizen journalists who have died during the Syrian civil war, and anyone inside the country is under threat of kidnapping or death.

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Turkmenistan's leader literally owns the media.

Turkmenistan ranks 173 out of 179 countries with a score of 79 out of 100.

Until January 25 of this year, Turkmenistan President and Prime Minister Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov owned the country's 39 publications, five radio stations, seven national TV stations and one press agency.

Anna Soltan, a Turkmen journalist working with NewEurasia.net, recently told Al Jazeera that most local journalists who report for foreign media have left the country or "given up on journalism."

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North Korea is truly the Hermit Kingdom when it comes to news.

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North Korea ranks 178 out of 179 countries with a score of 83 out of 100.

The country's constitution protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but only if the views are supportive of the government and the ruling party.